Indie Author S.L. Madden

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Everything At Once

I’m nearly ready to launch my new book, The Shadow Walker. I set a goal for myself to get it out by Halloween (at first, I thought I could get the 2nd Only Human on the Block out at the same time, but we’ll just overlook that for now). The book isn’t horror and doesn’t take place on Halloween, but I think it fits in well with the holiday. It certainly has nothing to do with Santa and little to do with eating turkey.

Even though I only started publishing in July, it seems like it’s been a long journey to get to this point. Ascension and The Four-Year-Old Guardian were nearly done when I started. It mostly came down to some formatting and a little tweaking. The Shadow Walker was my NaNoWriMo project last year, so if I pull this off, it’ll be a one-year turnaround. That’s a record for me. Even better, I’m nearly done writing the second one, The Shadow Within and plan to write the third, World of Shadows, for NaNo this year. If all goes well, I’ll have the entire trilogy written by the end of the year, with plans to publish it all by early next year.

As I get closer and closer to my self-imposed deadlines, I’m starting to feel the pressure. We’re getting a dog this weekend (a beautiful Collie named Chance, which is great, because I have a cat named Kharma), so it’s been a little crazier than usual at home trying to get everything ready. Natalie seems to know we’re stressing about getting the house clean, because she’s been going out of her way to make sure it isn’t. I also decided to quit caffeine last week. Norma’s been talking about dieting and cutting out Coke seemed a logical first step. I’ve quit before, but it’s been some time, so I was ill prepared for the pain associated with getting caffeine out of my system. As a result, I feel like I’ve been zombie-walking through the week. I’ve had a constant dull ache in my bones and a pervasive fog over my mind. I’m happy to say, I’m feeling much better today.

In addition to trying to write the last few chapters of The Shadow Within and plot out how the trilogy will end in World of Shadows, I’ve also been trying to work on edits for Bravado/Dramatique. In hindsight, I should have released these books in a different order. I’d love to get the whole Only Human on the Block series out (or at least finish the fourth book, which I’ve been stalled on for over two years), but that’ll have to wait until next year.

The biggest hurdle I’ve had to face in getting this book out was one I put in place myself: a game called Dark Souls. I don’t play games all the time, but this particular one has really grabbed hold of me. I knew it would, as its spiritual predecessor, Demon’s Souls, did the same, but I still bought it day one. October 4th. A few weeks before my deadline. Why I didn’t wait until after the book was published, I can’t say. But balancing my time between editing and playing has proven to be one of the more difficult obstacles. I just keep telling myself to focus on the editing and then, when it’s all done and ready to go live, I can go back to getting slaughtered.

In the meantime, I’m just glad the headaches are starting to go away and I hope getting some fresh air while walking Chance will help.